Taste
by jayjaybee
Summary: One shot. A chance encounter triggers memories for Patsy. Patsy/Delia.


She's in the hallway putting on her coat when the smell catches at her. She turns, and without realising it, she's smiling.

Mrs Lim's mother is carrying a steaming dish of something from the kitchen to the room in which Patsy's just left Mrs Lim and her three day old baby. The old woman notices Patsy watching her; she comes towards her, lifting the lid of the dish so Patsy can glimpse inside. 'Chinese dumplings,' she says.

'I know,' Patsy says, stepping closer – she can't help it. The smell!

'You want one?'

Patsy hesitates but 'Go on,' Mrs Lim's mother says, and she reaches out to take one. 'Hot,' the woman warns her, and taking heed, Patsy blows on it before taking a bite.

The taste – oh, the taste. The taste flings her back twenty years and half way round the world, and suddenly she's seven years old, with pigtails and scabbed knees from where she's tripped and fallen (she wasn't graceful, like Grace but then she wasn't patient either, really) and she's in the tiny house that belonged to their housemaid's aunt. They weren't meant to be there, of course, but it was where they often ended up on those days when Su Lin collected them from school. Patience and Grace were sworn to secrecy - mother and father wouldn't have approved - but Patience loved it, loved this world that to her was a forbidden secret. She loved its tastes, its smells, its people, the language that she didn't understand beyond a word here or there. Her curiosity, more often than not, would bring her inside from the patch of ground where Grace would be playing with Su Lin's young cousins, into the kitchen where the women were, and they, not knowing what else to do with her, would sometimes feed her scraps of this or that. And that was where she'd had her first taste of real Chinese cooking, a dumpling not at all unlike this one.

Oh, the taste. She'd forgotten all about it, almost. But now she's there again. As she chews, she can almost hear the sound of Grace playing outside.

'Good?' Mrs Lim's mother asks.

The sound isn't Grace, though, and Patsy's not seven years old: the mix of childish voices comes from Mrs Lim's other three children, playing in the yard outside. It's not Grace.

With Mrs Lim's mother looking at her expectantly, Patsy's suddenly rigid with tension. All she can do is nod. She swallows what's left.

* * *

The film finishes, and they linger to watch the credits, reluctant to get up, to break the spell, to lose the contact of hands palm to palm. But the inevitable comes, and they stand.

Patsy knows not to ask what Delia thought of the film. About other things Delia's usually quick to judge, to snap to a decision about what she likes and what she doesn't like, but with films it's different. Delia takes her time, she revolves it round in her head, and an hour or two later she'll say something, something that Patsy didn't spot, didn't realize, something that connects what they've just seen to something they saw last week or last month or last year, something that Patsy – who's just there to be mindlessly entertained and to enjoy the comforting thrill of Delia's presence - didn't see and couldn't have thought of, but once Delia's said it, more often than not, she can't help but agree.

Delia tucks her arm through Patsy's, and leads her towards the exit. 'It would look more odd if we didn't, Pats,' Delia had said one evening not long ago, after another trip to the pictures. Trixie and Barbara, up ahead of them and leading the way back to Nonnatus, had been linked arm-in-arm, and with their example before them, Patsy had agreed – not _reluctantly_ , because touching Delia was always a joy, but _warily,_ because some habits are hard to break. Since then she's let Delia do it more and more often, but usually when they're outside of Poplar, where every other citizen isn't someone she's helped in labour or injected in the backside, where she's not instantly recognizable as Nurse Mount.

'Hungry?' Patsy asks, once they're out on the street.

'Ravenous.'

Patsy tilts her head to one side. She's been thinking about something for a while and she's still not sure she wants to, still not sure she can. But she takes a deep breath and jumps anyway. 'Good. I want to buy you dinner.'

Delia grins. 'Chips?'

'No. There's somewhere near here I want to go.'

'Where?'

Patsy finds herself not able to say. 'You'll see.'

'I love a mystery,' Delia rubs her hands together, gleefully.

It's two or three streets away from the picture house, and Patsy wouldn't have known about it if she hadn't gone looking for it specifically, in the phone book, the evening after she'd eaten Mrs Lim's mother's dumplings, a month or six weeks ago now.

She leads the way, her step brittle and tense, despite her best efforts at remaining calm. She can feel Delia's questioning glance, the reassuring comfort of her touch, the quiet warmth of her trust. If she's going to do this, she can only do it with Delia by her side.

In a few minutes they're there. Warm, welcoming lights are shining in the window, lanterns in shapes that cause a shock of recognition that makes her stumble. She recovers herself, cursing a wonky shoe for her wobble, and, summoning up something that might be bravery or might be foolhardiness or might be something else entirely, she leads Delia across the road, through the door, and into a warm, fragrant smell that's like nothing she's known for twenty years.

'This is exciting,' Delia is saying, looking around curiously at the room into which they've just come. And then her face changes as she grasps the meaning of it for Patsy.

She reaches out to touch Patsy's arm, to clasp her hand. Patsy lets her, feels Delia's eyes studying her face as she tries to keep her expression neutral, as she tries to hold together whatever wound it is that she's come here to rip open. She wonders if she's made a mistake.

'Ladies?' A waiter approaches, dressed in a style Patsy's not seen since her childhood.

Delia catches Patsy's eye, because for the moment Patsy can't speak. Raised eyebrows ask a question. It's the chance to back out of this, if she needs it. She's grateful for Delia asking, but she doesn't want to take the get out, not now. Instead, she answers her with a nod.

'A table for two please,' Delia says.

'I've been thinking about coming here for a while,' Patsy says, once they're seated.

'You daft old thing. You should've told me.'

The waiter fusses round their table, makes to replace the chopsticks that are already laid out with English cutlery.

'No,' Patsy says, as he's at her place. 'Leave them. Please,' The waiter stops, startled. Shrugging, he turns to Delia. 'And you?'

Delia's game for anything, of course. 'I'll give it a go,' she grins.

He lays the menus out in front of them.

Looking over the pages, words, meanings, flavours long forgotten come flooding back to Patsy. She flips it over, hungry for more.

'Oh,' she looks up at Delia and laughs. 'You _can_ have chips if you want.'

'No,' Delia says, scanning down the menu. 'Goodness, there's so much choice. You order for me, Pats.' Her smile is uncharacteristically shy. 'Tell me what's good.'

Once they've ordered, Patsy shows Delia how to hold the thin slivers of wood and reveals her own dexterity with them, which, having lain dormant for so long, is another thing that is suddenly alive to her. Their hands linger together longer than is strictly necessary for the lesson, but Patsy feels the need of the touch of Delia, right now, and she knows Delia won't mind.

They don't have to wait long for the food, and for that Patsy's glad. They've both been working today, and the bread and butter they had before before they came out is now many hours ago. They eat hungrily: Delia gives it a few mouthfuls before she concedes defeat and trades her chopsticks for a fork.

'I'm going to practice. Next time, I'll be able to do it.'

As they eat, Delia begins to expound her theories about Holly Golightly.

Patsy's glad of it. The sound of Delia's voice is a comforting distraction – and perhaps they both know it, because it seems that Delia's making an effort to be extra witty - from the emotions that this food is ruffling within Patsy. She won't let them overwhelm her here. It'll be later when they come, when they surge through her, as a consciousness used to repressing grief, sadness and anger can deny itself no longer.

Perhaps this was a bad idea after all.

Fingers touch hers – her hand, it seems, has stopped the transport of food to mouth and is resting, chopsticks idle, on the table. Her gaze is somewhere off the edge of the table, on the carpet near the feet of the man sitting opposite. Delia's fallen silent, she notices, suddenly. She must have realized that she'd lost her.

Delia's thumb rubs the back of her hand. 'Pats?'

Patsy manages to raise her head, and give a sad smile. Anyone else might have asked 'Are you ok? Is everything alright?', questions to which she could nod sharply and deny that anything was wrong. Not Delia, though. Delia knows she's not ok, she knows she's not alright. And Delia also knows that she finds admitting that so very hard.

Patsy's head drops again, her eyes on the wall now; at the corner of her vision is Delia's sleeve.

'Perhaps this was a bad idea,' Delia says gently.

To her own surprise, the shake of Patsy's head is adamant. 'No,' she says. 'It's just…' She focuses on the gentle impression of Delia's thumb on her hand, tries to force herself back to the here and now, to think only of that sensation and of what it conveys.

She feels, rather than sees, a waiter approach their table.

Without letting go of Patsy's hand, Delia deals with him politely, thanks him as he clears the table, tells him it was lovely. By the time he's gone, Patsy's composed herself once more.

'Sorry,' she says.

'Don't you dare apologise. You have nothing to apologise for.' There's a fierceness to Delia's tone. Patsy's not sure she agrees with her but she loves Delia for believing that she shouldn't have to keep the mask in place, for telling her that she's allowed to break down, that she's allowed to show herself as she really is. She smiles at her gratefully, squeezes the hand that still hasn't let go of hers.

The waiter returns with the dessert menu.

'I couldn't eat another thing,' Delia says, rubbing her belly with her free hand.

Patsy agrees, but looks at the card all the same. She runs a finger across the words on the menu. 'Jasmine tea. My mother used to drink that.'

'Do you want to?'

Patsy considers. The food is one thing: it is a reminder of a place and a time. It is tinged with what came after, but it is not ruined by it. But the tea: that is a reminder of all she has lost. She can't.

'Next time, perhaps.'

'Maybe next time, then,' Delia agrees.

* * *

The tears come later.

'Come to me, if you need to,' Delia had murmured, before they'd gone their separate ways to bed, and Patsy had shaken her head, not wanting to disturb her. Delia had caught her hand and held it tight. 'Patsy, I mean it.'

And now here she is, hovering on the threshold, the clock not long having chimed quarter past two. She's crept into Delia's room, in the middle of the night, in distress, countless times over the years - oh, so many nights when they were both living at the nurses' home; once or twice even after she'd left for Nonnatus. Delia's room has always felt like a safe space for Patsy, much more so than her own room. It's love, she supposes, that's key, not just privacy. The knowledge that comfort that will be found. That protection will be offered.

'Delia,' she whispers, and even as she speaks she can taste the salt on her lips from the tears that she can't stop.

'Mmph.' Delia blinks sleep from her eyes, shuffles to one side, sits up. 'Sweetheart,' she says, throwing the covers back. 'Get in.'

In Delia's arms, she sobs. She is safe, she is warm, she is loved, and she sobs.


End file.
